Strength coach’s checkered past leaves Marquez open to scrutiny

You have seen it before, the dark, gray, menacing cloud of suspicion.

It will hang over Juan Manuel Marquez as he enters the ring tonight at the MGM Grand Garden, much as it has the fighter he will oppose a fourth time.

The same things have been insinuated about Manny Pacquiao, the same raised eyebrows pointed in his direction, the same doubts that his strength while climbing weight classes and winning belts has not been achieved naturally.

"This is not about size," Pacquiao said. "I've been fighting bigger guys, so it's about how you punch in the ring.

"I want to put (the rumors) out of my mind and give him credit for working hard."

Size was a constant storyline as Pacquiao-Marquez IV drew closer, specifically the noticeable bulk Marquez has added since the two met in November of last year.

It's obvious. He's bigger.

But more than veiled suggestions by some in Pacquiao's camp that Marquez has prepared for this fight with the aid of performance-enhancing drugs is the presence of a strength and conditioning coach whose past is anything but clean in the world of drugs and athletes.

Angel Hernandez was once known as Angel Heredia, back when he was a Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative chemist who sold banned drugs to athletes and supplied former track stars such as Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery with illegal substances, whose dealings with Jones included giving her growth hormone and insulin and the blood-doping booster EPO.

He is now very much part of the Marquez camp, hired by the 39-year-old fighter to help improve his strength while not forfeiting quickness at the welterweight level, which hardly occurred in a unanimous decision loss against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2009.

On that night, Marquez was slow, deliberate, weak. He wasn't nearly as defined and cut as Mayweather and got pummeled for it.

Think about it: For a fighter whose counterpunching skill has been his biggest advantage in three fights against Pacquiao, despite a 0-2-1 record for Marquez, why would he do anything that might diminish it by getting so big?

"If you guys are going to sit here and talk about the (charges of PED use) all the time, we can sit here and talk about it all day," Marquez said. "I don't care. All I can do is work hard. You can say anything you want, but there is no proof, so what does it mean? I feel great. I have strength, I have speed, I have everything.

"Before my last fight (against Pacquiao), they were saying the same things about him with (PEDs), but we never brought it up. We never did anything about it. We didn't know anything, so we didn't say anything. And now, for this fight, the last couple of weeks, all of a sudden they're attacking me.

"Let's do the drug test. Let them take my blood. I don't care."

A big problem with that theory: Any protocol Marquez might have used to prepare for the fight would have been stopped by now and his system cleared of such substances. EPO, for example, can be undetectable on tests within 24 hours of being injected.

A certain famous cyclist proved that for years.

Marquez offers a different theory on his newfound muscle and appearance: That, for 18 years, he trained in the same manner, a system based on the same philosophy with identical workouts and conditioning goals.

Now, under the guidance of Hernandez, everything is different. He is lifting amounts of weight not normally seen from a boxer, squatting to levels that have trainers wondering how an aging fighter has rediscovered such strength.

"In the heavy stages of training, we went through phases called 'maximum effort,' " Hernandez said. "The (training regimens) are my secrets, and I don't intend to tell so all trainers can copycat. It's all legal, all within the law.

"You have to understand, I'm a scientist and not just a strength coach. Weight training has changed a lot and evolved. In the past, it was just the boxer and manager. Now, you see more strength coaches around boxers. Nothing illegal. I think (the accusations) are unfair."

Not really, not when you consider his past dealings with BALCO. Hernandez is an admitted steroids distributor, having testified such under oath. His role makes anything asked of Marquez this week fair game.

The sad truth is, if Marquez was to finally beat Pacquiao after what have been three extremely close and controversial fights, if he were to actually knock out Pacquiao, such a victory no doubt would be questioned by many given the charges of PED use.

You have seen it before, the dark, gray, menacing cloud of suspicion.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on "Gridlock," ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.